What? Chilean Quake May Have Shifted Earth’s Axis?

Well, it may be only 1.26 microseconds (millionths of a second) shorter, but hey…that’s pretty impressive I would think. Scientists ar NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California used a computer model to calculate the effects. Apparently islands may have shifted also, according to Andreas Rietbrock, a professor of Earth Sciences at the U.K.’s Liverpool University. Santa Maria Island off the coast near Concepcion, Chile’s second-largest city, may have been raised 2 meters (6 feet) as a result of the latest quake.

This was apparently nothing when compared to the magnitude 9.1 Sumatran in 2004 that generated an Indian Ocean tsunami shortened the day by 6.8 microseconds and shifted the axis by about 2.3 milliarcseconds (about 8 centimeters or 3 inches). (BusinessWeek)

This is pretty wild. And by the way…how does anyone actually know what a 10 on the Richter Scale is, really? I would that there could always be something larger, more impactful. For those that have the urge to research…it’s truly thrilling: Wikipedia